Vol. 53 - Time Enough At Last

On the only thing I don't like about being a dad

I love nearly everything about fatherhood. The obvious, of course; the good times, the moments when you’re heart explodes with love or your brain with wonder; watching your kids grow and learn and become human beings; building a deeper bond with my wife than I ever could have imagined.

Even the tough stuff—like the fact that I’ve had human shit caked under my fingernails more times than I’d like to admit or those moments when my son is furious with me that I won’t let him watch this show or do that dangerous thing or how, for a good three-year stretch, my wife and I simply didn’t sleep—I absolutely love.

There are things I miss about being childless, no doubt. Things like hanging out with friends, having last-minute adventures, sitting on a plane in peace and enjoying a 35,000-foot cocktail, or taking a flyer on going to see a band I know nothing about at a small local club.

I miss those things, yeah. But not nearly as much as I love being a dad.

But there is one thing I don’t like about fatherhood, however; one thing that I loved more than most things before my son, and then my daughter, came along. One thing that my brain just simply cannot process, likely due to sheer exhaustion. And that is reading.

I’ve been a voracious reader more or less since I learned how to read when I was five or six years old. It’s a trait I inherited from my mother, who could easily put back three, four, sometimes five books in a week.

Of course, as it has with most things, fatherhood had thrown a human-shaped wrench into my lifelong regimen (not to mention the impact of Emily going to graduate school when our son was less than a year old, a second pregnancy resulting in a miscarriage, and a third pregnancy resulting in our daughter. Oh, and a global pandemic).

In those five years, I can count on less than one hand the number of books I’ve read. And, sadly, neither of those include two books released major publishers written by two dear friends (because those books deserve my full attention and headspace. Not some half-cocked, half-brained attempt to simply finish a book).

But now that our daughter is a year-and-a-half-old, now that she’s sleeping through the night, and now that our son is easily occupied by an evening movie or a robust coloring book, I am slowly but surely (emphasis slowly) getting back to reading. This year alone, I’ve finished two books which feels like a huge win. That they took me two-and-a-half months notwithstanding, I’ve read William Finnegan’s beautiful treatise on surfing and being a human, Barbarian Days and former United States Poet Laureate (and proud son of the Jersey Shore) Robert Pinsky’s Jersey Breaks.

Next up, rereadings of two all-time favorites—Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (which I’m hoping hits different now that I have children) and Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp—followed by Thomas Beller’s love letter to hoops, Lost In The Game, Pine Barrens native Davon Loeb’s The In-Betweens, and Nic Brown’s Bang Bang Crash, which tells the story of a drummer who realized he might make a better writer than he does a rock-and-roller. Sounds familiar.

But before all that, back to my buddies and the hopes that I can devote a fully rested brain and fully open heart to Nabil Ayers’ My Life in the Sunshine and Always Faithful, which was co-written by Worth Parker.

Maybe, just maybe, I can get all these in before the end of the year. But if not, I’ll still be thrilled to watch the stack at my bedside shrinking rather than growing, thrilled to once again just be reading.

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